Ryan Stuart, explore's gear editor

Spanked by the Colonel (no chicken involved)

• Posted on July 14, 2009 at 4:25 PM
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The view down to Landslide and Foster (snow covered) lakes from high on Colonel Foster. Sometimes this was what we saw when we looked between our legs.

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“Mount Colonel Foster Summit Traverse”

At nine o'clock on Friday night we rapeled off the main summit of Mount Colonel Foster onto a relatively mellow ledge and called it a day. We'd been on the move since 5:30 that morning and were completely spent. And we were far behind schedule. Our worst case scenario the day before had us a rapel or two short of the end of the route. Instead we're two summit, a dozen rapels and several pitches of climbing from getting off the rock. The Colonel was giving us a spanking.

Basically we'd underestimated the Summit Traverse, a route that goes up and over five main summits and several smaller ones on Vancouver Island's preeminent mountaineering peak. From Landslide Lake, a 12 kilometre hike from the highway, the summit ridgeline looks intimidating but the view hides the intricacy and route finding needed to get from one end to the other.

Our climb started well, with a stellar forecast and perfect blue skies as we climbed snow and rock to the South Col. From here we quickly gained the Southeast and Southwest summits. The Main Summit seemed like a short rapel and a pitch or two of rock climbing away. Instead it was two rapels, a stuck rope that ate up an hour, some steep snow to navigate, another short rapel, an intensely exposed ridge to traverse, another scary traverse, with 3,000 feet of air, to negotiate and then some more climbing. When we got to the top, six hours later we realized it wasn't the actual main summit. An hour later we were signing the summit log, the first group to do so this year. We had no water left and our day's worth of food was running short.

Feeling shattered and darkness approaching we dug out some flat ground among the loose rocks and did our best to forget about where all these rocks came from (rock fall from above). With a rope and a pack to sleep on I settled into one of the most scenic campsites I've ever enjoyed(?). We looked out towards the Pacific and watched the sun slide slowly into the ocean without an obstacle blocking its view. We're pretty sure we had the longest sunset of anyone on Vancouver Island.

For the lack of padding and our 7,000 foot high bed we slept pretty well. But man our breath stunk. No food and no water makes some nasty breath and horse voices. We started the day, at 5:30, with a rapel into an abyss, followed by a short scramble onto the Northeast Summit. Then we rapeled into the unknown searching for rapel anchors and the right route to get us to a tiny col where we could climb the Northwest Summit.

Another loose scramble brought us onto the Northwest Summit where we found a puddle of water. Dirty and old it still tasted better than any Evian I've ever sipped. Here we gobbled some of last remaining food and bumped into another party heading to the summit. We gathered beta off each other and then continued on, looking for the way off the mountain to the north. Five or six rapel's later, at about 5:30 we finally rapeled off the rock and onto snow.

A bushwhack brought us back to our camp at Foster Lake and then we bee-lined it for home. We had people expecting us back by dark and we knew they'd be calling in a rescue by the next day. We shut off the pain meters, put our legs on auto pilot and started hiking the 14 kilometres back to the car. It was dark with 9 kilometres left. We finally emerged at the trail head at 12:45 am on Sunday. I think the 40 minute drive to a bed was the most dangerous part of the trip. I was definitely intoxicated from exhaustion.

If you're ever looking for beta on climbing on Colonel Foster drop me a note. I'd be happy to share. I'll get a blog up about how my gear performed in the next day or two. And hopefully some video. The clips I have get funnier as the trip progresses.